


it was a fire that built this home

by oreomouse



Series: brick by brick (to tear down and rebuild) [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Found Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Protective Azula (Avatar), Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck, i think azula loves zuko in her own very messed up way, im frothing at the mouth for any of their content, the dynamic between zuko mai ty lee and azula keep me up at night, these are my emotional support morally gray teenagers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:13:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27258484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oreomouse/pseuds/oreomouse
Summary: This is the first time he's redirected lightning and he is losing control over it. So he aims above his Father's head and lets it go. Zuko misses.Or, Zuko is crowned Firelord after the Eclipse, he tries to piece the nation back together along with 3 (three) brainwashed child soldiers, and the Gaang is confused but along for the ride
Relationships: Azula & Zuko (Avatar), The Gaang & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: brick by brick (to tear down and rebuild) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1990237
Comments: 10
Kudos: 192





	it was a fire that built this home

**Author's Note:**

> warning: i THINK i switch verb tenses a few times, not actually sure. yes i am 17 no i still do not know how to properly use past and present tense yet
> 
> UH. so this was more words than i thought. i was gonna combine the first 2 chapters but it was too many words and my brain started hurting so imma try and make slightly smaller chapters

Zuko feels powerful.

The lightning that his Father -that the Firelord- that Ozai- the lightning that _he _threw at him (a Prince, the Heir to the throne, his _son _) is restless inside him, and yet he is controlling it, harboring it.____

_____ _

____

_This is what Azula must feel like _, he thinks. Such caged energy stored inside him, waiting to be released and be destructive.__

____

____

Zuko feels like he is being eaten from the inside out, like if he keeps it up any longer he won’t just get charred, he’ll explode. (He had seen the way the Avatar had jerked when Azula’s lightning hit him, the way his limbs stiffened and moved of their own accord) 

_Is this what power is? _It hurts, the pain is sharp white hot, and he can’t see because the lightning is sticking to him like a second skin, wrapped around his limbs like a noose. He doesn’t have the ability to move for any longer and so he lets the lightning out of him and collapses.__

____

____

Firelord Ozai- _Father _\- collapses right with him, and at first Zuko is confused because why would producing lightning take so much out of a strong bender like him, but then he looks over and smells burning flesh and-__

____

____

Oh.

\---

“Azula” He says, and of course she would be the one to find him like this, half unconscious in a room smelling of throw up and burning meat.

The only good thing about this, he decides, is that for the first time in years he sees his sister in a state of dumbfounded shock. Or, well, her eyebrows are drawn together and the left side of her mouth is pinched, but that’s basically a blaring sign saying “What The Fuck” hanging above her head. 

“ _Honestly _Zuzu, I leave you alone for 5 minutes to win the war and you have to go and commit patricide.”__

____

____

“Azula.”

“All of my plans. Wasted. And it’s all on you, of course. After all I’ve done to get you home, to bring you back in one piece? And here you are in peasant clothes like you’re playing dress up again-”

“ _Azula. _” And her eyes narrow even more at him, and he wonders what she sees. “It. It was an accident. I didn’t- I didn’t mean to, I would never, I wanted to- I want to be good. Agni above I swear it was an accident.”__

____

____

And Zuko watches her as she runs her gaze over the both of them, father and son both in disarray on the floor. And then Azula meets his gaze, and their relationship has somehow gotten stronger since the Beach Fiasco, but he realizes that he has no idea what she’ll do. She would be well within her right to kill him where he stood (lay) for counts of high treason and become the youngest Firelady in all of history, she could win the war-

_Oh Agni oh Agni above the war- they were going to- the Earth Kingdom- the boy with a small knife in his hands the girl with the burns on her legs the girl who only wanted to see the courtyard lights on their night out- he needs to stop the war. _He needs to stop the war. But in order to do that he’ll need to be Firelord but Azula is still standing over him just watching, waiting for the final piece to fall into place, waiting to craft a plan.__

____

____

She straightens her shoulders and looks him in the eye and says: “No, it wasn’t.”

Before he can even process that to respond to it:

“Guards! An assassin has struck, Father is dead and the Crown Prince has been injured. If you return to me without the assassins head I will take yours in their stead.”

And then Zuko passes out.

\---

The Firelord is dead and the Heir to the throne is currently on bedrest with burnt fingertips and they have dozens of war prisoners being escorted to different prisons and the Dragon of West is _at large _because her dopey Uncle can apparently punch through stone walls now, and now she has to deal with these ignoramuses in front of her trying to commit treason with the subtlety of the Avatars flying mop.__

____

____

“We are loyal, of course. Loyal to the Crown.” The guard gazes at her topknot where the Firelord’s crown would be placed. It would be so easy, wouldn’t it, to tell them the truth (what _was _the truth because the only information she had in front of her was that Father had been shot with lightning and the Zuko had signs of burnt fingertips where said lightning must have flowed through him- but that didn’t make sense because she remembers the terror on Zuko’s face, the realization of what he had done, who he had killed, and a person can’t fake a thing like that. Her brother is many things but a liar is not one of them, so for now she is inclined to believe him.__

____

____

And besides that, since when has her idiot brother been able to produce lightning anyways? Lightning required full control over your emotions and full peace of mind, of which Zuko had equally neither. And if he had managed to produce the lightning, Father would have seen it a few seconds in advance, enough time to duck besides the underground throne or to rush at him or to straight up _dodge _it before it hit him and Agni Father was really dead wasn’t he-)__

____

____

The guards in front of her shift from side to side, and Azula realizes that as she was trying to piece together how Father had been killed by _Zuko _of all people she had been staring off into space, which had the effect of making her look like she was planning how to properly dispose of a room full of treasonous guards.__

____

____

And the realization hits her, all at once like a crashing wave of magma, that she has no plan for this. Every point in her life so far had been part of a long term strategy game, every thing she’d ever done for an explicit purpose: pick fights with Zuko to be favored, be favored to be recognized as the best, as a prodigy, so that when she rose to power after Father no one would question her.

Zuko was too weak to rule, that’s what Father told her and that’s what she believed. With his love of small creatures and distaste for meaningless violence, as Firelord he would only lead the country to ruin. But Father was dead and even if Zuko hadn’t meant to kill him, he was alive. Zuko was supposed to be weak but he had still survived through all his misfortune. In the end, if Father was killed by such a person, did that make Father weak or Zuko strong?

It doesn’t matter in the end, not really, because Zuko was here and Zuko was family, so for now Azula would follow his lead. 

“I told you to bring me the assassin's head and yet here you are, headless” She drawls, making brief eye contact with the half dozen guards in front of her, seeing the dread that fills each of them.

Azula walks around to where her Father's corpse is laid out, eyes open and limbs splayed around him. She crouches, looking at his body as if there is something she is missing, because she has to be missing something.

“I will give you one full day to leave and bring me the person who did this. If you return to this palace while Firelord Zuko is in place without the proof of the assassin then I will have you killed for treason.”

It’s more blatant a threat than she is used to making to the staff, but she has enough to deal with without the palace guards throwing a fit over who they believe to be fit for the crown. Zuzu is the only family she has left and she just got him back. She’ll enter a fistfight with Agni Himself to keep Zuko in his rightful place.

\---

“You believe me?” Zuzu asks, half passed out in his bed that looks like it’s about to swallow him whole. The curtains were drawn, and yet Agni shone through the curtains with all His might. The palace doctors had moved him from the sickbay to his quarters after it became clear that all he needed was lots of rest. Rest that he wouldn’t be able to get, because their country would fall apart if the people didn’t see some sign of leadership after knowledge of the “assassination” went out.

“You are a horrible liar, brother. But if you did make a 13 step plan on how to kill Father during the eclipse, the throwing up all over yourself was very well done. Although next time you might want to wear a mask. You could’ve even masqueraded as the Blue Spirit, his supporters would’ve loved the reappearance.”

Zuzu isn’t even rising to the (expertly laid) bait, just staring at her with glassy eyes, placid skin making his scar look harsh even in the dimmed light.

Azula had seen the Agni Kai, seen Father cup his own son's cheek in his hand and let fire bloom in his palm until Zuko was screaming, burnt flesh stinging the nostrils of the council members and other people in the audience. At the time she thought he deserved it, the lesson. Zuko was always vying for Fathers attention, for his approval, and he had been given a golden opportunity. But then he had thrown it away, so of course he had to be punished. He had disobeyed Father, the Firelord's will. Father could not be lenient when it came to discipline, even when it came to his own son. 

But.

She came to see him in the hospital, just once.

His face was drowned in bandages but she could still see tiny peeks of his face, pale and drawn and sweating from a fever. She had won, no reason to compete with him because soon he would be gone, Father had said after a few years he would name her Heir and then she would eventually rule, and everything would happen like it was supposed to. 

Pride coiled around her lungs and constricted, drawing tighter the longer she gazed at blood soaked bandages piled in a box at the end of the bed. It settled like an itch in her throat, the pounding of her heart, the stinging of her eyes. She had never felt pride so strongly before, but what else could it be? She had won the game, and her prize was seeing her brother half dead in his bed. 

Zuko’s voice flings her back to the present. Azula’s head was not a nice place to drift through, and she hoped she would stop spacing out at crucial moments just because she was looking at family members' mangled bodies.

“You set me up.” Was he talking about her covering up Father's death? Zuko had to have known that if she told the truth (she doesn’t know what the truth is, which grates at her) he would be thrown in a cell and executed at dawn (By her. She would have to give the final command, to destroy the only family who has ever tried to understand her, who has ever truly believed her words.

Father didn’t count because he only thought he understood the core of Azula, and when it didn’t fit his expectation he changed it to suit his needs.)

“With the Avatar,” he clarifies. “You set me up.”

“I made you a hero.” Azula had lied to Father for him, how did he not understand? She brought him back, back where he belonged, and she made a legend out of him. 

“You made me more of a liar than I already was.” He turned away from her (Agni he was still so dramatic, even half dead), burrowing deeper under the covers like a turtleduck retreating into its shell.

“Is that why you’re dressed like that? In rags? Were you going to leave again-” After everything she had done, and this is how he repaid her? First Mother, then Zuko, then Father, and now Zuko again, trying to leave her _again _.__

____

____

“I didn’t- I didn’t _leave _Azula, Fath- Ozai banished me! He sent his own son away- threw me out and stripped me of all my titles when I was 13!”__

____

____

“And he _welcomed you back. _Who do you think did that Zuko? I went against Father for you-”__

____

____

“Stop lying Azula! Please. If you’re gonna lie just leave.” He looks tired, propped up against the pillows like this. Weaker than usual.

_I’m not lying. _But saying that would be like baring her neck in front of a mother platypus bear, and even though Zuko would never take advantage of it she would have to live with the fact that she had stooped to such levels.__

____

____

“Leave? And do what? Perhaps you’d like me to explain to the staff- to the guards- to our people that you became a traitor to the crown? If that’s what you want Zuko, you should’ve told me before I managed to convince everyone otherwise.”

“You haven’t convinced anyone, Azula.” He just sounded tired, like the lightning had taken away with it whatever anger he had left in him.

“ _Rude _,” Maybe her brother had picked some knowledge up from their family lessons if he was able to hurt her so. “Of course everyone believes me, I’m the Princess.”__

____

____

“That just means that they’re too scared to disagree with you in public. Even you can’t sell such an obvious lie.” 

What. What does he _mean _people don’t believe her. The guards had nodded, hadn’t they? They hadn’t questioned her or hesitated when she directed two of them to lift Zuko’s body and get him to the medbay as quickly as possible. And none of them had looked disbelieving when she told them that of course Zuko hadn’t done it, it was an assassin that had escaped. Which way had the assassin gone, they asked. She wasn’t a guard so that wasn’t her problem, was it? Zuko must be lying, because the guards had eaten her every word up.__

____

____

But if Zuko was a terrible liar and she could tell he wasn’t lying then that meant he was telling the truth-

“I changed my mind. It was obviously a mistake to try and cover up your mess, I’ll just go get the guards and- why are you _laughing _at me, this is a period of mourning you absolute buffoon.”__

____

____

\---

There are less servants in the halls. 

No. That wasn’t it. There were people on the outskirts, lingering at the edge of the Fire Princess’s vision. The servants were always careful to not be seen or heard, but more than ever they made sure to drift to the sidelines, to watch the royal family interact with each other. 

There were rumors of an assassin cutting off the Firelord’s head, of the Avatar returning from the Spirit World to crush Ozai’s head like a finger squeezing a grape. 

(The most obvious reason is that the Crown Prince killed his own father in the moments just after the eclipse ended. The staff as a whole dismissed this idea outright, they had seen the way the Prince [“nice to meet you- or see you again, I guess. I’m Zuko. Prince Zuko”] had interacted with everyone- he wore his anger like an ill-fitting robe, a boy with a warm spirit like him could never kill his Father in cold blood)

In any event, the staff is lying in wait, watching the guards pace back and forth, seeing the Fire Sages shuffle down the halls, to see which sibling they would have to cater to. They keep an unofficial list in their head, of the family’s traits and quirks, that’s shared in quick murmurs while eating or folding laundry. The Prince’s list goes like this:

1\. The Prince can spend hours at a time just smiling down at the turtleducks.  
2\. He tries to learn the name of the servants. There are rumors he had worked while banished, in customer service no less. Insane, but it would explain his stilted politeness with everyone.  
3\. When getting served tea, the Prince always reaches for the pot to pour it out himself. The first time this happens, when his servant Kaido tries his best not to gawk at the Heir to the throne casually pouring his tea, the only thing the Prince says is: “Don’t tell Father.”

There are more, little things about how he likes his tea or how he hoards scrolls of old plays underneath his bed. The Prince is an oddity when considering the rest of the Royal Family. So the staff waits, on the off chance that the Princess doesn’t usurp the throne, because they want to stick around and see what kind of ruler a boy like this could be.

If the Princess wears the crown, then most who are working in the Palace are ready to use the same tunnels the Firelord died in to make a quick escape. _Visiting sick relatives _, they’ll say. If the people who stay behind have any honor in them they’ll wait until the full moon makes a reappearance and then announce that those who left had passed on to the Spirit World, taken by whatever mysterious illness had caused them to leave in the first place.__

____

____

\---

The doctor tells Azula that Zuko will be moving by the next day, which helps her current situation only slightly. She strides to her room, trying to ignore the feeling of eyes tracking her movements down the hall.

When she gets to her room she closes the door, only to see Mai and Ty Lee sitting on the couch underneath her window, waiting for her.

“Azula!” Ty Lee bounces closer to her, pulling Azula in a brief hug that displaces her instead of comforts. “We heard that there’s a commotion-”

“Yes, there is a commotion that I and my brother are dealing with. Father is dead and Zuko is going to be crowned Firelord tomorrow.” 

Zuko didn’t know that second part yet, but she would update as she saw fit.

Tense silence falls over them.

“Oh Agni, Azula. Are you okay? What happened?” Ty Lee shifts closer to her again, and Azula side steps her to move closer to her desk, where she can put together what needs to happen before tomorrow afternoon. 

Azula still doesn’t know what happened, doesn’t know what went down between Father and Zuko before she entered the underground throne room. She hadn’t asked Zuko, because any answer she received would force her to rethink her position.

“What do you need us to do, exactly?” Mai says it as bored as she says anything else that comes out of her mouth, but Azula recognizes it for what it is: an offer to share the burden.

Well, she had trusted them to help her take over Ba Sing Se, right? What was a coup compared to an assassination coverup? Azula doesn’t actually know, but maybe the two of them will.

So she straightens her shoulders and looks at the two of them evenly. In this situation, Mai and Ty Lee are one of her only allies.

“Listen carefully. This is what we’ll need to do:”

\---

Zuko falls out of bed sometime in the middle of the night, sweat making his sleepwear cling to him. He’s no stranger to nightmares, but still- he’s never had one quite like this before.

He stands up, and he could go back to his bed, in the dark and quiet but something about sleeping after what he just dreamed unsettles him. It seems wrong.

So he slips out of his room, into the halls, letting his feet lead him.

Zuko stops in front of Azula’s room and feels an urge to let out a big sigh and breathe some fire. 

He is going to be Firelord this time tomorrow, but he’s scared enough of his dreams that he wants to knock on her door and ask her to let him sleep on the couch in her room.

It’s really unfair that he goes to Azula’s room on the one night when he feels like he needs comfort and not berating, but this was the Royal Palace he was talking about. Zuko hadn’t been here since he was seven and Azula was five, when she was young enough to still have nightmares but felt too old to crawl into a family member’s bed.

Azula used to hit him awake with a pillow and then drag him to her room to keep the monsters away. In the morning she would tell Mother that it was really Zuko that had a nightmare, not her. Zuko never corrected her.

Zuko is about to turn away and head back to his room when Azula’s door opens. He goes to say something to her but she turns around without closing the door behind her. Azula gathers some of the thicker blankets piled on her bed and dumps them on the floor, along with a single pillow. And then she climbs back into bed and turns so her back is towards him.

Ignoring him or a sign of trust? With Azula, it was probably both.

Zuko doesn’t say anything, just curls up on the pile and breathes out slowly.

“There aren’t any servants anywhere,” Zuko whispers as he stares at the canopy over Azula’s bed. Even in the middle of the night there was always a person or two around, relighting lamps or cleaning out the rooms during a time when they couldn’t be interrupted. But as Zuko was walking there was no one, just him walking around, trying to shake his head free of cobwebs. “It’s like they disappeared.”

“They’re waiting.”

“For what?”

“Me to betray you. Me to continue the family tradition of killing one another for power. They’re waiting to visit ‘sick relatives’.” 

“Sick relatives?” Were people sick? Should he do something about it? He was going to be Firelord, he should know if a virus breaks on one of the islands so that he can help stop it.

“The more pressing issue here should be on the topic of betrayal, Zuzu.”

“Don’t forget who came up with that nickname, _zuzu _.” Zuko can hear Azula give a huff at his words, and he tries not to laugh at her.__

____

____

“You haven’t called me that since you were six.”

“And you started calling me Zuzu when I was six. Because you were mad at me for stopping.” 

“You can’t prove that.”

“You can’t _disprove _that.”__

____

____

Azula mutters something along the lines of ‘spare heir’ that makes Zuko shake with laughter. When she hisses at him that he’s disturbing her sleep it just makes him laugh harder.

_You’re not going to betray me. _Zuko isn’t sure if he says it out loud or not, and he isn’t sure if it matters either way. Azula would never believe his words without facts to back him up, and the only thing he has is a gut feeling. A gut feeling that the two of them were in this together.__

____

____

\---

“Bad dreams?” Ty Lee asks softly, sipping on her tea.

The four of them are in a room directly off of the garden, the sliding walls pulled back so they can overlook the turtleduck pond and clustered flowers. Zuko and Azula are seated side by side at the low table, while Ty Lee sits opposite him. Mai lounges on a cushion away from the table, looking at the ceiling with bored eyes.

Zuko and Azula are both wearing white, as is the custom.

Mai hasn’t spoken to him yet (he didn’t have time or brain required to take back that stupid stupid letter he left her) but she is still here today. It means a lot to Zuko but he doesn’t know how to tell her that without getting sighed at.

“Yea,” Zuko acknowledges. Azula had woken him up with a kick to the back of his knee and narrowed eyes. She hadn’t asked her about why he was wandering the halls the night before, just opened the doors to let the servants collect him and dress him for the day.

“I can tell. Your aura is pretty messed up.”

Zuko hunches his shoulders, wondering if he can be swallowed by the fabric if he tries hard enough. 

He had fought Azula, about being crowned so soon (crowned at all), but she had fought twice as hard and he was too tired at the time to protest. 

“Well, let’s get this over with.” Zuko isn’t sure who said it, but it’s a thought he’s sure all of them are having.

Zuko stands up and prepares himself to lie to a crowd of thousands about his Father’s death.

\---

“Let’s add ‘Phoenix Killer’ to his list of titles.’” Princess Azula, new Heir to the Throne, tells the Fire Sages blithely. The dozen Fire Sages in the Temple fall silent at her words. No one had seen her come in, the doors were supposed to be locked. It was the morning before the coronation and funeral, everyone rushing to get preparations ready in time for the sun’s peak. The Princess should’ve been preparing a memorial speech, not breaking into temples to demand they add a title they don’t know the significance of.

_An inside joke _, they think. _What other reason would she have to request such a strange thing. _____

_____ _

_____ _

A young girl draped in bright pinks pops up behind her and starts casually walking around _oohing _and _aahing _and the giant mosaics set into the interior. And where there are two of them there have to be three- there, in the shadows behind her next to the entrance, is a figure with blank eyes examining a shuriken in her hands.____

_____ _

_____ _

If the Princess brought the two of them with her on her mission, it’s obvious that this is more than just a joke. This isn’t a request, it’s a demand.

_The whim of a royal family member, nothing more. _The Sages were used to dealing with nonsensical whims of royals and nodding along.__

____

____

But it obviously is something more, because when the Head Fire Sage opens his mouth all three girls zero in on him. The bubbly girl who wasn’t even facing him, enamored by a mosaic of dragons, turns around when he goes to speak.

“Of course, Princess. We will take it under consideration. May we ask why?”

“It amuses me”, she says, and then strides out of the room. The two girls immediately follow, the girl in pink waving with a cheerful “See ya!”

The Fire Sages all look at one another and let out of a quiet sigh.

Teenagers.

\---

Zuko is kneeling in front of the Fire Stages, aware of the thousands of stares on him. He was the first Firelord in the Nation’s history to be crowned before their 18th name day. 

He had no idea what he was doing, no idea why he hadn’t pushed Azula to give him more time to process everything, to let the Nation be controlled by the council for the mourning period of Father.

He had no idea what he was doing.

But Azula was standing with him, for reasons he didn’t understand but was grateful for. And Mai and Ty Lee were in the front row of the crowd, the former gazing at him with almost soft eyes and the latter wearing a small grin.

He had been going to run away, the day of the eclipse, away from this place that used to be his home. He wanted to be good, to leave behind royalty in order to fight alongside the Avatar, but instead he was being crowned Firelord as Father’s ashes cool on the pyre in front of him. 

_Ashes that are my fault _.__

____

____

Zuko is wearing white for the coronation, the color of mourning in the Fire Nation. He is vaguely reminded of the same scene all summers ago, when it was Father kneeling like this, Grandfather dead and Mother gone. 

_Your Mother is alive _, Father had said. A way to stall Zuko to make him stay or a reason for him to leave sooner?__

____

____

The sun has only risen once since the eclipse, and instead of being a traitor to his country he was chosen to rule. None of his plans necessarily went well, but this one had to be a mess up of epic proportions.

“Firelord Zuko, Welcomed Prince and Phoenix Killer, you may now rise.”

The crowd cheers.

\---

“Phoenix Killer? Is that your idea of a joke, Azula?” 

“Ty Lee thought it was funny.”

“I-”

“See. You’re laughing now, aren’t you Zuko? So I was right, it was funny.” 

“I’m laughing because I finally found something you’re bad at.”

“Still better than you, aren’t I? Why don’t you tell me a joke then, hmm?”

“Well uh, Uncle once told me a joke about tea. It went- don’t look at me like that, the patrons at the shop loved it- it went. Well I forget how it went but it ended with ‘nice to leaf you!’ and it was funnier than your joke.”

“This is the cruelest you’ve ever been to me, I have not done one thing in my entire life to deserve this.”

“...”

“Too much?”

“Even you can’t get away with a lie like that.”

\---

The Prince is now the Firelord, so the palace staff stays.

The crowd had cheered for their new Firelord (at appropriate levels, they were still supposed to be in a state of mourning) but the people in the capital didn’t truly care one way or another. One family member was interchangeable as the rest when it came to royals.

This view of Firelord Zuko changes after his fourth assassination attempt.

\---

**Author's Note:**

> wow! so besides the trauma of brutally accidentally killing his own father, Zuko is doing great! now he's in charge of a nation that's been at war for the past 100 years, and he wants to change everything! i'm sure everyone will be very supportive about this. i'm also sure that Azula will react calmly to any threats against one of the last important people she still has in her life. <3
> 
> next update? next week? next two weeks? i have SATs who knows
> 
> (this is my first fic- you don't have to be gentle but pls don't yell at me)


End file.
